Conference Speakers

Colin Wijnholds

Broadcast Talent

In 2011 Colin found his way to YouTube, at first simply as an outlet for his creativity. Combined with his love for the game League of Legends he expanded his own channel Koolein and grew to be one of the more well known names of his generation.

In 2017 Colin left YouTube behind and made the leap to Twitch, where he started to focus more on esports. His interest in esports has only grown since then and Colin has visited several events, such as IEM, Worlds 2016 and ESL One.

In november 2017 he became a reporter at ESL Benelux Winter 2017, which led to him being asked more and more as a desk host and since then he has hosted numerous events.

Colin also has a background in radio and has voiced several characters in animation movies, including the Dutch version of Angry Birds.

Kim Rom

Founder and CEO of Xplayn.com

Kim is a pioneer in esports, where he has built brands and lead product teams for more than 20 years. Known as the “godfather of esports” in Denmark, he built the first semi-professional esports team, established the leading community site and the first esports cafe in Denmark. He later built the marketing team in SteelSeries, where team sponsorships helped the brand grow $1m to $80+ million a year with zero advertising. Co-author of 10+ patents relating to esports hardware and performance tracking.

Toan Nguyen

Partner at Jung von Matt/SPORTS

Toan started as an intern at Europe’s most awarded sports marketing agency, Jung von Matt, and became the youngest strategy director in the company’s history at the age of only 28. Two years later, he was named equity partner at Jung von Matt/SPORTS and currently leads the strategy, PR, celebrity and most notably the gaming & esports division with non-endemic brands like Mercedes-Benz, Vodafone, Pringles and Mc Donald’s.

Toan studied in Maastricht, Singapore & Rotterdam and graduated with distinction. He also has been a Master of Arts lecturer at the International School of Management (ISM), Germany.
In 2017 he was nominated as a Cannes Lions Jury Member for the category Brand Entertainment. He also wrote a book with his fellow jury colleagues.

Joona Leppänen

Marketing Director at ENCE

Joona has been active for 20 years in the esports industry, including being a professional player and coach. He also created his own personal brand as Social Media and influencer marketeer, taking baby steps towards where it is today. He also worked as a B2B Sales Consultant in the IT sector for five years.

ENCE is the best known and most successful esports team from Finland. They house Starcraft II World Champion Joona “Serral” Sotala, the finalist team from IEM Katowice 2019 CS:GO Major and they recently acquired a team participating in the PUBG European Pro League. The company was re-launched in 2016 and since has won many international titles in multiple games, such as Starcraft II, Rainbow Six Siege and CS:GO. Their hashtag #EZ4ENCE was named as one of the rising trends on the Reddit platform in 2018.

Anna Baumann

Managing Director and General Counsel @ Rogue Sports Europe

Having focused as an attorney on professionalizing esports establishing best practices with regards to player welfare, integrity issues and grassroots efforts since 2015, she has been taking a step back from legal practice focusing fully on building Team Rogue’s presence in Europe. With Rogue’s entry to the LEC franchise in 2019, she uses her comprehensive legal and management knowledge as well as her esports network to build the esports club’s foundation in Europe. She also got appointed by peer review to be a member of the ESIC Discplinary Panel (http://www.esportsintegrity.com/esic-disciplinary-panel/). She has been integral to the founding of the German Esports Association (“eSports-Bund Deutschland e.V.”) and acts as legal counsel for the association.

Rogue’s ownership group has a unique vision to build a global brand connecting music icons, esports superstars and community outreach and strives to offer one of the best environments to players for realizing their full potential, building sustainable careers and evolving their individual brands. Working with investors like grammy winning band Imagine Dragons and world renowned DJ Steve Aoki offers fans a fresh take on esports entertainment.

Minh “Gooseman” Le

Creator of Counter-Strike

In 1999 Minh “Gooseman” Le invented the game Counter-Strike. After his work on Counter-Strike he spent a few years at Valve where he worked on various titles such as Day of Defeat Source and CS:Source. He left Valve in 2006 and developed a new First Person multiplayer game called Tactical Intervention. Working with a small team of four developers they were able to release a fun free2play FPS game that provided unique and innovative new game mechanics that weren’t found in other FPS games.

In 2012, Minh joined Facepunch Studios to work on a massively successful openworld title called Rust. In 2018, he joined Pearl Abyss Studios to work on an unannounced title.

Romain Bigeard

Business Development Manager for Riot Games

With a Bachelor’s in History in one hand, and a Master’s in Business in the other, Romain Bigeard started carving a career out of his passions in 2012. His internships at Activision-Blizzard and Razer soon converted to a role as Razer’s expert in European esports — which, in turn, took on a familiar pink hue as he joined LCS team Unicorns of Love in 2015 as Team Manager.

His roles at the time was to run the gamut from brand development and sponsorship activations to his most famous role as team mascot, providing entertainment for Unicorns and EU LCS fans alike. His success then caught the attention of North American esports organization OpTic Gaming, who were building up their League of Legends department in 2017. It took one year for Romain to set up a fully operational work environment in Los Angeles on OpTic’s behalf, with a focus on player performance.

Now, as part of Riot’s Business Development Team here in Berlin, Romain’s task is to utilize his experiences across both regions to establish a sustainable ecosystem for the newly christened League of Legends European Championship (LEC). His challenges now include improving the operational cost efficiencies, pro team support structures, partner relations, and activation models for the league.
He still plans on showing up at some LEC games once in awhile.. After all, the best esports crowds are here in EU.

Riot Games was founded in 2006 by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill with the intent to change the way video games are made and supported for players. In 2009, Riot released its debut title League of Legends to worldwide acclaim. The game has since gone on to become the most played PC game in the world and a key driver of the explosive growth of esports. Players are the foundation of our community and it’s for them we continue to evolve and improve the League of Legends experience. Riot Games is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA and has 23 offices worldwide.